“Go on,” said Onslow, “and argue it out with the donkeyman. Only I hope you’ll see it my way in the end, because I don’t want this entertainment to end up with a shooting-match. I like you both too well to want to see either of you die in front of my pistol; and (what I have far more concern in) I most particularly don’t want to be killed myself just now.”
“Because you have a lady waiting for you when you get back?”
“That is so,” said Onslow. “Respectable married life will come to me as a novelty, and I’m anxious to taste it.”
“I wonder if you ever will?” said Captain Kettle thoughtfully.
Then he turned to the donkeyman and gave him a careful sketch of what had happened, and drew vivid pictures of the bucolic joys to be extracted from five hundred thousand pounds.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A FLIGHT AND A RESTING-PLACE.
Mr. Theodore Shelf had arranged for an exodus de luxe, and flattered himself that he would have no difficulty in carrying it out. He had got to know exactly when the police were going to come for him at the house in Park Lane, and had slipped away from there in his own brougham, so as to leave himself a comfortable margin of start. He had stepped out of a railway-carriage at Newport, whilst all the authorities fondly imagined he was still on his way to Liverpool; and, with George and a small russia-leather handbag, had taken a cab down to the docks.
He pulled out his large gold watch, looked at it, and smiled. Punctual to the minute! He paid his cabman, and, with the dog at his heels, stepped daintily amongst the litter on the wharf to where a single gang-plank joined it to the Gazelle, one of his own steamers. He went on board and shook hands with the captain.
“All your portmanteaux have come, sir,” said that officer. “I saw them put into your room myself last night.”